Low K materials (referring to materials with a dielectric constant less than that of silicon dioxide) have become increasingly popular in a variety of applications, for example, as interlayer dielectric films (ILD). A number of conventional low K materials are porous in nature, some of which include open pores. The low K materials may be organic, such as SiLK (™) available from Dow Chemical Co., and/or inorganic, such as porous SiO2-based materials. Black Diamond (®) available from Applied Materials represents a PECVD (plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition) deposited SiCxOyNz material that may be low K. It is a generally recognized problem among porous low K materials that deposition of films on the porous structure may yield discontinuous layers. That is, the roughness and/or porosity of the material produce openings in the deposited films that normally would not be present if deposition instead occurred on a non-porous material. Accordingly, a variety of technologies have been developed to address the problems associated with porous low K materials, especially when used as ILD.
However, it will be appreciated that some of the known technologies addressing such problems possess limited application to certain processes and structures and further improvement is desired. Possibilities for improvement include simplified integration into existing processes where porous low K material is used and a reduction in cost of the added processing that addresses discontinuities in porous low K materials.